The Platters

In 1956, a group of five Black singers reached number one on the United States pop chart.

The song was called "The Great Pretender", and they were the first. The first Black act of the rock and roll era to top that chart.

To understand what that means, you have to understand how the business was set up.

Two charts, and you knew which one was yours

The American record industry of the fifties kept separate charts. There was the pop chart, the general one, and there was the rhythm and blues chart, which until shortly before had been called, without any embarrassment, "race records".

A Black artist went on the second one. He could sell enormously, he could be huge, and he was still on the separate chart.

Outside the charts it was the same: hotels where you could not sleep, restaurants where you were not served, whole cities where you played for an audience that could not sit down with you.

The Platters formed in Los Angeles in 1952. The line-up that history kept was Tony Williams on lead vocals, with David Lynch, Paul Robi, Herb Reed and Zola Taylor.

Behind them was a key man who is almost never named: Buck Ram, their manager, who also wrote the two songs that made them.

What they did with it

They did not record protest songs. There was no manifesto, no accusation, no rage.

They recorded love ballads. Sophisticated, slow, perfect, with a lead voice that rose above the other four with an elegance that left no room for argument.

And there is the move, deliberate or not, but it worked: a love song cannot be pigeonholed. It is not "Black music" or "white music". It is one person telling another what they feel, and anybody understands that.

"Only You (And You Alone)", from 1955, was number one on the rhythm and blues chart for seven weeks and reached number five on the general one. It is worth saying precisely, because it is usually told as an outright number one, and it was not.

But it opened the door. The following year came "The Great Pretender", and that one was a pop number one. And then "My Prayer" in 1956, "Twilight Time" in 1958 and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in January 1959.

Four number ones on the general chart, in four years, in a country segregated by law.

The old song

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" deserves a note of its own, because it is told badly.

It was not their song, and it was not a new one. It is by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach, from the musical "Roberta", from 1933. It had already been number one in 1934, with Paul Whiteman.

The Platters did not turn it into a classic: it already was one. What they did was something different and more interesting. They took it, stripped it of its era, and handed it to a generation that had not been born when it was written.

That, in the end, is their specialty. Not inventing the material, but performing it so well that it seems to have been born right there.

What to remember

The Platters are proof that beauty sometimes opens doors that force cannot.

Put on "Only You", "The Great Pretender" or "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and you will hear an elegance with nothing submissive about it: a group singing so well that arguing with them was ridiculous.

They did not knock down the wall. Nobody knocked it down in one blow, and that was not their job. What they did was open a thin crack in a place where there seemed to be none, and through that crack came soul, Motown and half a century of music.

Remember them this way: not as a group of old ballads, but as the ones who proved you could come in through the front door singing about love.

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Sources

The Platters, a vocal group formed in Los Angeles in 1952. Their classic line-up was Tony Williams (lead vocals), David Lynch, Paul Robi, Herb Reed and Zola Taylor, under the direction of manager and songwriter Buck Ram, author of "Only You (And You Alone)" and "The Great Pretender". "Only You" (1955) reached number one on the rhythm and blues chart for seven weeks and number five on the pop chart; this is worth stating precisely because it is frequently presented as a general number one. "The Great Pretender" reached number one on the pop chart in 1956, making them the first African American act of the rock and roll era to top it; it was followed by "My Prayer" (1956), "Twilight Time" (1958) and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" (January 1959). The last of these is a composition by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach for the musical "Roberta" (1933), which had already been number one in 1934 in Paul Whiteman's version. The charts separated by race were Billboard's commercial charts: the general pop chart and the rhythm and blues chart, called "race records" until 1949. There were African American groups with crossover success before the rock and roll era, such as the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots. The Platters were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Billboard, Wikipedia, AllMusic and other coverage.